First taste of Piola Pizza

Piola, a brand-new spot in Midtown, is easily the best-looking and most festive pizza parlor Houston has ever seen: alive with bright-colored pendant lamps that give it a madcap carnival feel, set to a Bollywood-to-R&B sound track. All of which would be neither here nor there if the pizza weren’t good. But it is.

Alison Cook

The dining room at Piola Pizza in Midtown. The brightly colored lamps are a signature style for the international chain.

Not great, mind you, but good-verging-toward-very-good: and Houston’s pizza scene is not yet so rich that I am ready to turn my nose up at the merely good.

In fact, I was surprised by how much I liked the thin-crusted, wood-fired pies I sampled at Piola last week. The crusts had a good healthy scorch on the bottom and the lip, one of my personal requirements for a hedonistic pizza feed. The ingredients seemed to be of relatively high quality, the preparation was careful and the service cheerful. It wasn’t inexpensive, most of the food-wide, quartered pies being in the $12-$16 range, but the price bought not only style but a nice grade of mozzarella, prosciutto, arugula and salami, among other things.

By the time I departed three pizzas later, I was already planning my next visit, encouraged by the thought that such a pleasant venue was — in its position alongside of Sushi Raku, on Louisiana just south of Elgin — mere minutes from my East End neighborhood.

Alison Cook

The Como pizza at Piola, with porcini mushrooms and prosciutto.

The restaurant is part of a growing pizza chain that started out in Italy and has had its greatest success internationally, most notably in South America, where the Italian populations of Argentina and Brazil have cultivated a strong pizza culture. Buenos Aires boasts of having a pizzeria on every block, while Sao Paolo claims to be the world capital of pizza. (The Brazilian megalopolis celebrates an annual pizza day, makes a Sunday-night ritual of pizza-eating and supports an astonishing number of pizzerias: 6000 seems to be the lowball figure.)

All of which explains the South American touches on Piola’s lengthy pizza menu, which offers 12-inch pies in the thin-crusted house style; a slightly thicker-crusted Neapolitan style with a higher bubbled crown; and a special section devoted to “white pizzas,” which are made without tomato sauce. Some of the pies feature catupiry, a Brazilian version of cream cheese; and I had high hopes for the Buenos Aires pizza, a thin-crusted white pie adorned with mozzarella, thin-sliced onions and oregano.

Alison Cook

With their crisp perimeters and floppy middles, Piola’s scorchy thin-crusted pizzas are made to be folded over for consumption.

I learned to love that combo at a long-gone Argentinian pizzeria in Southwest Houston where the owner was cranky but that fugazetta pizza (as the combination is known) was swell, and I still pine for it now and then.

Piola’s too-polite version didn’t slake my nostalgia, though. Nothing wrong with the crisp thin crust, the smooth gilding of sticky-runny mozzarella. But the thin raw onion rings still had a bit too much rawness to them, and they could have used some seasoning. The dried oregano just didn’t wake the pie up enough. If they had sauteed the onions a wee bit first, salting and peppering them, things might have clicked.

My red-sauced pizzas here were more successful.

The thin-crusted Como had its shaved, slick prosciutto added just before serving, while the pie was hot out of the oven, a welcome Italian touch; and its sauteed hunks of porcini mushroom brought a strong, clear earthy note to the proceedings. I didn’t think the filmy layer of tomato sauce added that much in the way of flavor, but the overall effect was appealing, and the crisp-edged, floppy-in-the-center crust was just made for folding up the center line, the better to convey it mouthward. I had demolished three of the four pieces before I was even conscious of what I was doing, assisted by a glass of what I found to be amazingly drinkable Chianti, a Villa Rogole ’09 with a resinous herbal aroma to it.

Alison Cook

The Pompeii pizza at Piola is made in a thicker-crusted Neapolitan style with spicy salami and blobs of buffalo mozzarella.

But oops, my next glass of Chianti — the same darned wine — had all the grace of funky prune juice. How did that happen? And a table mate’s Torrontes went down a lot more easily cold than it did when it warmed up and turned harsh, even clangorous.

The short list of wines at Piola (I would hesitate to call it a wine list) could use a little editing. There are so many interesting, inexpensive Italian and South American wines that would suit this informal cuisine (the pizzeria’s Silver Ridge Argentinian Malbec is one of them) that it seems a shame to make the choices so cursory.

Alison Cook

Even the napkins are amusingly designed at Piola pizzeria in Midtown.

I couldn’t leave without sampling a Neapolitan pizza, too. I adore a well-made Neapolitan-style crust, with its puffed-up crown and satisfying chewiness. Piola’s Pompeii pizza came close to doing the trick: only a slight rubberiness to the snowy blobs of buffalo mozzarella detracted from the bright tomato sauce and disks of spicy hard salami. With a little tinkering this could be a real winner.

Alison Cook

The very Argentinian white pizza with onions and oregano at Piola pizzeria.

So could Piola itself. I watched the hostess fuss charmingly over table arrangements for an incoming party of 12, and thought the atmosphere would be just right for casual holiday gatherings. Hey, they’ve already got their colored lights strung, both indoors and out, where an oak overlooking the covered dining terrace is stippled with ice-blue lights. And get this: Piola is open semi-late, until 11 p.m. most nights and 1 a.m. on weekends. Useful!

In the end, I couldn’t resist the restaurant’s convenient location and the promise of that first visit. I did what a critic so rarely finds time for: went back on my own nickel. My carbonara pizza with bacon and lightly scrambled egg on a tomato backdrop, with grated parmesan to punctuate the thinly pooled mozzarella, proved to be the best Piola pizza yet. I ate the entire thing myself and no, I am not a bit sorry.

I’ve been to New Haven on several occasions, and that bottom pic looks like a clam pie.

I’m originally from New Jersey and am also incredibly picky about pizza. So much so that I often make my own. I’ll give this place a try this weekend (I guess I’ll drag myself over the border inside the loop).

You know what this town needs? Coal fired ovens! Probably wouldn’t get them past the EPA.

If it’s good enough for Argentina, it’s good enough for me. I had an Argentine e-friend who was telling me that there are so many pizza-by-the-slice places in Buenes Aries that every cops-and-donuts joke ever heard in the US is a cops-and-pizza joke in BA.

I’ve not been able to go to Piola in Houston (On the schedule for this weekend!) but I’ve frequented their restaurant in the Washington DC area for a couple of years. I was so excited when I heard they opened that I SQUEALED! Being Brazilian born I take my pizza very seriously and there are certain things I cannot find in very many places. Their Rio De Janeiro pizza is one of those. In Rio, where I’m from, this is the most sought after pizza, the chciken and catupiry mix is the best thing in the world! I love Piola and I would definetly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good slice…. or four!